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A Repositioning You Won’t Forget

No, that is not Cindy Gallup of Bartle Bogle Hegarty in this ad. Nor is it Andrea Fitting, but don’t think people haven’t asked.

If sex really does sell, The Fitting Group in Pittsburgh will have a host of new clients, though we wonder which kind. The small shop has erected several billboards like this one around town in recent weeks in an effort to encourage businesspeople to refresh their brands through Fitting’s Brand Magnetics process. After companies complete a six- step program (Step One: a retreat of “self-discovery” that includes “a little ouch and a lot of aha!” according to a similarly themed brochure), they’ll be ready to “punish their leading competitors.”

The ads are obviously meant to be provocative, but Fitting, the shop’s founder and CEO, says she is also trying to get local marketers to think differently about their positioning without feeling that they necessarily need to reshape their entire platform. “This isn’t about brand spanking new, this is about spanking your brand,” she says.

Fitting says she’s gotten some good feedback from the community. But the all-too-common question, of course, has been: “Is that you?”